


The World Between Us

by incidental



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-26
Packaged: 2018-02-26 10:47:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2649200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incidental/pseuds/incidental
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love will have its sacrifices, and if Carmilla has her way, she will be one of them. Set post-1x33 and 34, multi-chapter. Nice and fluffy at the end, I promise!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mon Coeur

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm kind of dying after episode 33, and I couldn't wait until Tuesday to see what happens. This fic is intended to pick up immediately after 1x33, and follow the story from there. It's my first multi-chaptered Carmilla fic, but I don't see it being more than 4-5 chapters long. Just enough to follow the arc that I saw in my head coming after this episode. Hope you'll ride along with me! I promise it won't be utterly soul-destroying. I'm way too cotton candy on the inside for that.

Carmilla barely got through the clearing between dorms and near the edge of the woods before she fell to the ground, body quaking, legs seeming to give up beneath her. The earth was cool and damp, already imbued with the night, and it soaked through the knees of her pants. Her tears burned on her cheeks, and she wiped them away angrily with the heels of her palms. She hadn’t felt this way in how many hundred years?

“Oh, come now,” a warm, syrupy voice crooned from somewhere close behind her. She did not jump; she had already felt the familiar presence before she announced herself. It was almost caring, to someone who didn’t know any better.

“Leave me alone,” Carmilla demanded through gritted teeth. “You got what you wanted, haven’t you?”

“But my sweet girl is so sad,” the Dean said, placing a hand on Carmilla’s slight shoulder. She never felt small, until the Dean touched her—a hand on the shoulder, a finger tracing her jawline. Then she felt impossibly soft, and warm, and weak, and in the worst way. Like an infant. Like something easily harmed. “How can a mother celebrate when her child weeps? Hmm?”

“Spare the rod, spoil the child,” Carmilla repeated, an aphorism conditioned into her over the last few hundred years. She could not see the Dean’s face, but she knew her features would have taken the shape of a dry smirk.

“Yes,” the woman agreed. “Well, you had to learn the hard way, I suppose. You have always been my problem child, _ma fifille_. But tell me, did you really think she would love you? That she could?”

Carmilla said nothing in response, but her set jaw gave the Dean all she needed to continue.

“Of course you did,” she said condescendingly. “You thought you’d have your fairy tale, yes. But you must see it now, that Laura will never love you. She couldn’t, not once she knew your true nature. She would always betray you, just like Ell. They’re all the same. Consider, love, why else would young girls be the ideal sacrifice? Everyone wants to see them gone, honestly.” The Dean chuckled. “It’s the most useful thing they can do. I’d really be doing you a favor, taking that little nuisance and rounding out the five…”

“Don’t you dare,” Carmilla snarled, and the hand on her shoulder abruptly turned from a loving squeeze to a sharp, painful grasp.

“Language, _ma chère_ ,” the Dean tutted. “We don’t speak to our mother that way.”

“You’re not my mother,” Carmilla said, and before she knew what was happening, the Dean yanked her around and slapped her full in the face, hard. It felt like being hit with plywood—the force sent Carmilla wheeling backwards into the dirt, landing hard on a tangle of roots. She bit her tongue against the cry of pain.

“I may not have given you your first breath, but I gave you _life_ , Mircalla,” the Dean hissed. “You’d do well to remember that. I’m the one who made you what you are, who made you great. I’m the one who gave you that coffin for the price of your betrayal, instead of taking your life, as I would have anyone else! I’m the one who let you stay above ground after you escaped. I’m the one who spared your meddlesome girlfriend, when quite frankly I haven’t a damn to give about her. Do you think I do these things for my health, Mircalla? No,” she spat, “I do them for you.”

Carmilla stared at the Dean with wide eyes, holding her breath out of habit more than anything else, since she no longer actually needed to breathe. The woman, even taller and more rigid from the ground up, pressed her thumb and index finger against the bridge of her nose. She drew a deep, settling breath and exhaled slowly.

“Temper, temper,” the Dean said with a light chuckle. “Love is passion, as you know. And I do love you children so. I would do anything for you.” It frightened Carmilla sometimes, to hear her mother talk like this, because in her right mind Carmilla knew that everything the Dean did was for her own self-interest. But somehow, somehow, she managed to make them feel like she actually cared. Like some part of her was truly capable of loving.

Carmilla wondered, sometimes, if the Dean really believed herself. She wondered if she was the same way—like mother, like daughter. Maybe it wasn’t Laura who was incapable of loving her; maybe it was her who could never truly love Laura. 

Carmilla shook herself of the thought, tried to bring herself back to the present moment, as unappealing as that was— _Keep your head,_ she thought to herself. _You know how Maman makes you. She makes you think crazy things._

“I love you too, Maman,” Carmilla said, wanting to diffuse the situation as quickly as possible, and to preferably not be sitting on the ground as an easy target anymore. It seemed to work; the Dean extended a hand to her, and she took it, allowing the woman to lift her up to her feet with ease.

“Good girl,” the Dean said, reaching her hand out and cupping Carmilla’s chin in her palm. She ran her thumb gently along the girl’s jaw, and Carmilla did her best to relax into it. “You are a beautiful young woman, Mircalla. The prettiest flower in the garden, by far. Let’s put all of this nonsense behind us now, hmm? Be done with the girl, and the school, and all of this? Help me round up the last sacrifice, and after tomorrow, we can go wherever you’d like, _mon coeur_. Anywhere. You did so love Versailles…”

The Dean went quiet and gave Carmilla a peculiar look, as if she could read her thoughts, and for a terrifying moment Carmilla wondered if she actually could. But since her neck was not yet broken, nor her body parts scattered across campus, she had to believe that Mother was simply picking up on her expression and body language, not the contents of her mind.

“You don’t want to help, do you?” she asked. She was not actually looking for a response, she was just letting Carmilla know that she knew what she was thinking. If Carmilla did not hate her so much, she would have thought her mastery of the art of manipulation was genius. The Dean signed, dropping her hand from Carmilla’s face.

“You’re going to pout over this one for a while, I suspect,” she said with a melodramatic sigh. “I remember how it was with Ell, of course. Fine. I’ll take care of it myself; you languish around here like a dying animal for a few days, but then for God’s sake, pull it together and move on. The tormented lover outfit isn’t becoming of anyone, Mircalla, but least of all a pretty face like yours.”

With that, the Dean suddenly became difficult to see. It wasn’t that she disappeared, so much that Carmilla could no longer look directly at her. Before her presence faded completely, however, she whispered her parting words into Carmilla’s ear:

“There is a world between the two of you, Mircalla. An entire world. You will live in it forever; it’s time you learned that. In this kind of world, love will have its sacrifices.”

Carmilla stood there, unmoving, for several minutes after Maman left. Once she knew for certain she was alone, she began walking, slowly but deliberately, towards the northern end of campus.

Love would have its sacrifices, indeed. And one of them would be her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations, all French, are as follows:
> 
> ma fifille = my girl, my little girl (old-fashioned, informal)  
> ma chère = my dear  
> mon coeur = my heart  
> Maman = informal for "mother"


	2. Take Care

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moving right along to the next chapter... there's just something I like about the idea of Danny and Carmilla's dynamic. We don't really get to see it on the show, on account of they're always trying to kill each other, but I feel like eventually they will make really solid frenemies. I tried to write a little of that vibe here. Let me know what you think!

“I need to speak to Danny Lawrence.” Carmilla stood at the entrance of the Summer Society dormitory, arms crossed over her chest, as a sloppy blonde stared down a Solo cup at her with a mix of confusion and distrust. She thought about simply throwing the girl out of her way, as time was of the essence, but she decided to at least attempt politeness so the Summer Sasquatch wouldn’t attempt a staking before she got to talk to her.

“Who’s asking?” 

“A friend,” Carmilla said through gritted teeth.

“Uh huh,” the girl said, nodding slightly. “Okay, well, hold on. She’s really busy grading…”

“I just need her for a minute,” Carmilla said, but the girl had already disappeared. After a minute, she came back, followed by an impossibly tall redhead. The second she saw Carmilla, her metaphorical hackles raised—or maybe those were real hackles. Either way, she was clearly displeased.

“What are you doing here?” she spat. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be, like, oh, I don’t know, hell?”

“Pretty sure I’m already there,” Carmilla dead-panned, peering through the doorway into the dormitory. Bright pink and yellow striped curtains hung from a window, and high-octane Top 40 hits pumped through stereo speakers. Exams may have been in full swing, but it looked like almost everyone here was already partying like the semester was over. “I need to talk to you.”

“About what?” Danny asked, suddenly cautious. Carmilla had never really talked to her, so much as mocked her or threatened her life. And now that Danny and Laura weren’t speaking, they really had nothing to talk about.

“Can I come in? I just need a minute.”

Danny appraised her for another moment.

“You’re not going to try and kill me, are you?”

“Already would have if that was my plan,” Carmilla said. Danny frowned, but stepped aside, clearing a path for her. However, Carmilla did not move.

“I need you to invite me in,” she said. “Vampire thing. Technically this is a house.”

“Oh,” Danny said. “Uh, come in.” Carmilla quickly crossed over the threshold and followed Danny upstairs, down the hall, and into a small corner bedroom. 

“So?” Danny asked, arms crossed over her chest, making herself as tall as possible—which was really quite unnecessary since she was nearly a foot taller than Carmilla, even when slouching. Carmilla opened her mouth to speak, and realized that she hadn’t put much thought into what she was going to say. She took a moment to put her words together before she opened her mouth.

“We found a way to stop the sacrifice, maybe,” Carmilla began, but before she could continue, Danny shook her head and laughed.

“Did Laura seriously send you here to try and rope me into this ridiculous death wish of hers? Or is she just asking for another extension on her paper? Because if she thinks…”

“Laura didn’t send me,” Carmilla interrupted. “Actually, Laura’s not speaking to me, and probably won’t ever again. This isn’t her, this is just me.” Danny pressed her lips together.

“Okay,” she said. “But why do you care? Is Laura in danger?”

“No,” Carmilla said. “Well, yes. Probably. Mother said she would leave her alone as long as she stopped interfering…”

“… which we both know isn’t going to happen,” Danny said with a long-suffering sigh. “God, can we just tie her up and throw her in a closet until Saturday morning?”

“Technically that’s false imprisonment, but that’s your legal system, not mine,” Carmilla said. “But she won’t quit. Even if we don’t stop the sacrifice, she’ll keep digging, try to kill it once and for all so it won’t wake up for another snack twenty years from now. There’s no stopping with her. Whether it’s tomorrow, or next week, or next year, Mother will lose patience and kill her eventually.”

There was a drawn pause between them as they both more fully absorbed the reality of the situation. Danny sat down on the edge of her bed, holding her elbows and staring down at her knees. She didn’t want to care so much, but she did, and it was eating her up inside. 

“So what do you want from me?” Danny finally asked.

“I want you to keep her safe,” Carmilla said simply. “There are underwater caverns about fifty miles out from here—almost impossible to get to, they’re part of a cave system under the southern end of the mountains. I’ve been there before; I didn’t know the Blade of Hastur was there at the time, but now that we know what it is and where, I know I can get to it.”

“What is it, the Blade of Hastur?” Danny asked.

“Oh, you know. Supernatural weapon forged from the burnt bones of Star Spawn, meant to shatter all who oppose it, sealed into the face of a cliff, consumes the one who wields it…”

“Whoa whoa whoa, wait, consumes the one who wields it? That sounds ominous,” Danny said. Carmilla shrugged.

“I’ll be fine,” Carmilla said dismissively. “But I’ll be better if I know you’re keeping Laura safe here. Watch her, track her, use your freak wolf moon powers to—”

“Could you maybe NOT say that so loud?” Danny squeaked in an uncharacteristically high octave, jumping up from her bed and slamming the door shut. “How did you know?” Carmilla smirked.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “I’m almost 350 years old, and I’ve been a creature of the night for most of them. You really think I couldn’t tell?” Danny squirmed under her gaze.

“Okay, fine, yeah,” she said. “So it’s a thing. Moving on.”

“Right,” Carmilla said. “Just, take care of her, okay? Make sure she’s safe. Don’t let her do anything stupid." Carmilla paused, looking down at the toes of her boots before taking a shaky breath and continuing. "I need to know you’ll do that. I know you’re pissed, but I also know that you care a lot about her. Almost as much as I do.” 

Carmilla instantly regretted the last few words, because something immediately changed in Danny’s face. It was something she had never seen from her before, something softer and almost, was it pity? Understanding? It had been a long time since Carmilla had connected completely with the full spectrum of human emotion, so the subtle nuances of Danny’s face were a puzzle to her.

“Okay,” Danny said, nodding. “Yeah, okay, I’ll do it. I’ll keep an eye on her until you get back.”

“I don’t think you understand what I’m telling you here,” Carmilla said. “I’m not going to _be_ back. I need you to keep Laura safe, period. Promise me that.” Static cracked between them. Danny had never seen Carmilla so intense, so emotive, so raw—she felt like she was seeing an entirely different person. She frowned, but nodded.

“Yeah,” Danny said. “I will. Whatever it takes. I promise.”

Seemingly satisfied, Carmilla opened the bedroom door and let herself out. Danny followed her down the stairs and towards the front door. Just before she left, Danny reached out and put her hand on Carmilla’s shoulder. She was surprised at how small the woman was under her touch; something about Carmilla always seemed so big, despite her stature, and so to feel how slight she really was, it was almost unnerving.

“Please be careful,” Danny said, voice cracking. She cleared her throat. “I know we haven’t gotten along much… at all… but you mean a lot to Laura. And you didn’t kill me when you had the chance, so I guess that’s something, right?”

Carmilla turned around and gave Danny a trademark smirk, covering up whatever feelings may have been roiling beneath it.

“Sure, dog breath,” she quipped. “It’s something.” They both smiled, and Carmilla cleared her throat. 

“Take care of her.”

Suddenly, Danny found it very difficult to look directly at Carmilla. Then she wasn’t there at all. Danny wondered if she had ever really been there in the first place.


	3. Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm in the middle of about 6 different end of term papers right now, which naturally means that my creative writing is at its most prolific. It always seems to work out that way. Let me know what you think!

“Laura, honey, I think it’s time to put the Fireball down,” Perry said gently but firmly, prying the bottle out of the small woman’s hand and tucking it away up high on the shelf by the door. Laura was too drunk to argue—she knew she would have far more luck making the floor stop spinning than she would arguing with Perry right now. 

Of course, she could do neither. She couldn’t do much of anything, actually, which is what lead to the heavy application of whiskey in the first place. LaFontaine was beyond loony, Carmilla was gone, Danny hated her, Kirsch was taken, and The Dean was winning. They had no leads on possible weapons that could take out the Big Bad, or any real idea of what Lophiiformes was in the first place, except that in less than 24 hours’ time it was going to eat five of her classmates and she couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

Also, she was definitely going to fail her Lit final. 

“Whiskeyyyy,” LaF observed in a sing-song voice from the bed, where they were rather effectively hog-tied. Perry had never imagined her years in 4-H would come in so handy, but, well, she also never imagined herself carving stakes to fight off an unimaginable evil consuming coeds at her university. Life is funny that way.

(And by ‘funny’, of course, she meant terrifying and arbitrary and very, very abnormal.)

“Yes, dear, whiskey,” Perry said, patting LaF’s head absentmindedly. 

“I want the whi—“

“No, uh-uh, absolutely not,” she said. “Laura, please drink some water. We’re running out of time to think of something, and right now mine is the only brain capable of doing any real thinking.”

“What’s the point?” Laura asked from where she lay curled up on Carmilla’s bed. “Maybe all we can do is save ourselves.”

“That would certainly be the pragmatic approach,” Perry said.

“No, no, no,” Laura repeated, shaking her head. “We can’t just give up! They have Kirsch, and Betty, and all the others… we can’t just quit. We can’t.”

“I understand you want to help, Laura, but I do wonder if Carmilla had a point…”

“You too?!” Laura asked, affronted.

“I’m not saying she was right to lie to you,” Perry defended. “She should have told you right away after the Dean possessed you. I’m just saying that, given the circumstances… well, maybe she’s not wrong. Maybe she was the only one of us who could make a decision like that, to change course.”

“Change course? You mean give up,” Laura said bluntly after swallowing down a large gulp of water.

“Sometimes you have to quit while you’re ahead, Laura,” Perry said, looking down at LaF out of the corner of her eye. “And maybe, if we can get Su—LaFontaine out of this alive… maybe that is ahead, for us. Maybe that’s the best we can do. I don’t know.”

“No,” Laura said, reaching across the gap between Carmilla's bed and the desk and slamming her mug down in the general vicinity. She missed the mark by half an inch, and threw it on the floor. She stared down at it like it had done something to personally offend her, then turned back to Perry. “We can’t just give up. We’ll find something. We have to. Because if I said those things to Carmilla, if I called her a coward and then we just quit…”

Laura took a deep, shaky breath, pressed her hands against her eyes, and began to cry. Perry wasn’t sure if it was a drunk cry, or a real cry, or both. Probably both. She walked across the room and sat on the edge of Carmilla’s bed, gently brushing Laura’s hair out of her face and tucking it behind her ear.

“Shhhh,” she hushed gently. “It’s okay. Hey, it’s okay. She’ll come back, Laura. She will.”

“No, she won’t,” Laura sobbed between gulps of air. “I said awful things to her, and I didn’t mean it, I was just upset, but I… I said awful things. Just like Ell did. I treated her like a monster, Perry. I did the one thing I knew would hurt her the most, and I did it on purpose. She’s not coming back.”

“I think you underestimate how much she cares about you,” Perry said wisely, pulling two tissues out of the box by the bed and handing them to Laura. “I’m sure once she calms down you two will be able to talk things through. Also, she left her blood here, and maybe I’m completely insane for believing her, but I really don’t think she’s feeding on humans anymore. She’ll get hungry eventually. She has to come back.”

“I want a quesadilla,” LaF announced from the bed across the room.

Laura sat up and wiped her nose, slowly nodding in agreement.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay, yeah. She’ll come back, and we’ll both apologize, and it’ll be okay. We’ll figure this out.”

“That’s better,” Perry said, smoothing Laura’s hair and looking satisfied with herself. Just as the words left her mouth, there was a knock on the door, and Laura’s heart jumped in her chest.

“Who is it?” Perry demanded. An unexpected voice called out from the other side of the door.

“It’s Danny, is Laura there? I really need to talk to her. It’s about Carmilla.”

\--------------------------------

Carmilla was seriously wishing she had drank more than a grape soda that entire afternoon. The wind bit through her borrowed (and by ‘borrowed’ she meant ‘stolen from a passer-by’) jacket as she stuck her thumb out on the edge of the road. She certainly wasn’t going to walk the fifty miles to the caverns.

A dark blue sedan slowed to a halt on the edge of the road. The window rolled down, and a man peered out at Carmilla.

“ _Wo fahren Sie hin?_ ” he asked.

“ _Norden_ ,” Carmilla said, gesturing in the direction of the mountain range sloping gently to the north. “ _Achtzig Kilometer._ ”

She heard the car doors unlock, and he made a jerking motion with his head that told her to hop in. 

The first twenty minutes or so passed in relative silence, with the exception of a few standard thumbing questions. _Sprichst du Deusch? Wie alt bist du? Woher bist du?_ Carmilla usually pretended to speak very little German when traveling outside of the Silas University campus, to avoid having to speak to people for a sustained period of time beyond what was absolutely necessary. 

It wasn’t until the man reached over and placed his hand on her upper thigh that she loosed a few more choice German phrases.

“ _Fass mich nicht an, Schwein!_ ” she shouted, grabbing two of his fingers and yanking them back in a quick, fierce motion that, judging by his response, probably broke and possibly dearticulated them. The car swerved onto the shoulder of the road, and Carmilla yanked the door open, grabbed the man by the front of his shirt, and dragged him out. He scrambled away from her as quickly as possible, screaming insults all the while.

“Yeah, _fick dich_ too, buddy,” she growled as she slid over into the driver’s seat, pulled the door shut, and drove away. She smirked as she watched his shocked, angry face grow smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror. Maybe the entire day wasn’t a bust after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations, from German (thank you Kikoro for the German help!):
> 
> Wo fahren Sie hin? = Where are you going?  
> Norden = North  
> Achtzig Kilometer = 80 km  
> Sprichst du Deusch? Wie alt bist du? Woher bist du? = Do you speak German? How old are you? Where are you from?  
> Fass mich nicht an, Schwein! = Don't touch me, pig!  
> Fick dich = I think we all know what this means.


	4. Party Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went to a Thanksgiving party, drank way too much coffee way too late at night, and wrote this obscenely long, complicated chapter. My roommate thinks I've been writing one of my final papers this entire time... he has no idea I'm actually writing lesbian vampire fanfiction. 
> 
> The vast majority of the mythology I'm about to explore in this chapter comes from the works of H.P. Lovecraft, specifically the Cthulhu Mythos. It started off as me going off of the clue "Hastur" and exploring what could possibly be behind Lophiiformes in the Carmilla Series universe, and it spiraled out of control into all of this. I have absolutely no idea if any of this will pan out in the canon, but this is the conclusion I came to based on my own pseudo-intellectual exploration. Some things I totally made up, some are stretches of the Cthulu Mythos, and some are straight quotes from Lovecraft's canon. I'll be sure to cite my quotations at the end of the chapter.
> 
> With that, enjoy, and let me know what you think! Also, I'm a big fat liar, because I said this would only be 4-5 chapters long and it's definitely going to be at least 7-8. Oh well. :)

“You threw a tomato at me,” Laura said plainly, feet hanging off the edge of Carmilla’s bed, facing Danny as she sat in the chair at her desk. LaFontaine was still hog-tied on Laura’s bed, and Perry sat next to her, legs curled beneath her like a cat, holding LaF’s bound hands and running her thumb gently over them.

“Yeah,” Danny said, flushing a little and rubbing the back of her neck sheepishly. “Look, Laura, I’m really sorry about that. Like… really, really sorry. I don’t know why I… wait, are you drunk?” she asked, suddenly realizing that the small woman was swaying in her seat.

“Absolutely not… much,” Laura responded, shaking her head and taking a gulp of black coffee from the mug Perry had retrieved and refilled for her. “I’m working on it.”

“Jesus,” Danny muttered, pressing her thumb and index finger against the bridge of her nose. Carmilla was gone to find some sword that would kill her, LaFontaine was batty, and now Laura was drunk. Although at least now there was a solid collection of stakes piled up at the foot of Laura’s bed, the origins of which Danny was not going to ask about.

“Not his fault,” Laura said between sips. Danny couldn’t help but smile, despite the circumstances. She missed this, Laura’s humor, her little quips. It reminded her of… Danny remembered suddenly why she was here in the first place, and felt something dark and sick settle into the pit of her stomach.

“Laura, Carmilla came to see me.” Laura suddenly became very alert; her swaying ceased, and she set the mug down between her knees, brows furrowed.

“What? When? What did she say?” Danny was only slightly irritated that Laura did not ask if she was okay or if Carmilla had tried to, I don’t know, kill her, since that was the usual content of their interactions. But she knew this was neither the time nor place for grinding that axe. As much as it pained her, there were more important issues at hand, and her jealousy would simply have to take the back seat. She was a big girl, she could do that much. For Laura’s sake, if nothing else.

“About two hours ago,” Danny explained. “She said you two got in some fight, that you were never speaking to her again, and that she was going after this thing, the Blade of Hastur. Said she might be able to take out the Dean and whatever she’s feeding for good. But I looked up that Blade of Hastur, Laura. It consumes the one who wields it—that’s what she said, and that’s what I read. Consumes, like, kills. I didn’t know what to do, so I came here.”

Laura suddenly felt extremely sick, and wasn’t sure it had anything to do with the alcohol. She felt cold, and dizzy, and coming apart. Carmilla had gone to get the Blade of Hastur? She thought Laura hated her? It was going to kill her?

“Laura, are you okay?” Perry asked, taking note of her sudden blanched tone and the way she gripped the edge of the bed, as if she might fall off of it.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” she said, jumping up from Carmilla’s bed and running towards the bathroom. She barely made it to the toilet before a sleeve of partially-digested Oreos, six shots of whiskey, and half a liter of black coffee came up. She retched until her stomach was empty, then kept heaving, as if her body itself were rejecting what Danny had just told her.

She felt a hand holding back her hair, and saw a cascade of red curls in her peripheral vision. Now she was crying again.

“Better out than in,” Perry said, taking the cool washcloth Danny handed her and placing it on the back of Laura’s neck. After a few minutes of dry heaving, Laura gargled a shot of mouthwash and sat down on the bathroom floor, back leaned up against the wall, knees pulled to her chest. She didn’t even notice she was crying anymore. She didn’t notice anything. Perry was talking to her, and Danny, but she couldn’t hear them, not really. 

All she could hear was Carmilla’s voice, the deep, rich timbre that ran through Laura’s chest whenever she spoke. All she could feel was her cool, soft palm pressed against hers, other hand on the small of her back, pressing their hips together in a swift, yet careful motion. The way Carmilla’s thumb ran along the edge of her hand as she looked directly into her eyes, a gaze Laura was terrified to return—because it meant Carmilla felt it too, what Laura had been feeling, because it meant it was real and if it was real, if it was… 

It didn’t matter now, though. None of it mattered, because Laura knew she had broken it. Carmilla gave her something made of porcelain, and she shattered it. And now she was going to do something extraordinary and stupid and brave and deadly because Laura had called her a coward, because she thought Laura hated her. 

“Laura, Laura, _Laura_.” 

“Ow,” Laura finally said, coming back to reality. Perry was crouched down in front of her, and had just slapped her across the face. It took them both a second to realize what had happened, and they looked equally as surprised. Even Danny looked impressed by Perry’s last-ditch attempt to bring Laura back.

“I killed her,” Laura whispered thickly. “That sword thing is going to kill her and it’s my fault, I did that. I killed her.”

“She’s not dead yet,” Danny said sharply, “but if we keep sitting around on the bathroom floor crying about it, she will be.”

“What the hell are we supposed to do about it?” Laura asked. “We had two sources of information—J.P., who got smashed by the Dean, and the book, which is written in Ancient Sumerian. Anyone here take Ancient Sumerian lately? Because we had exactly one interpreter, and she’s gone.”

“Three,” Danny said.

“What?” Laura asked.

“Three sources of information.” Danny disappeared into the bedroom, and came back with her backpack, which was weighed down with several large tomes. Most were bound in leather, a few in fur, two in a scaly material, and one that looked suspiciously like human skin.

“Where did you get these?!” Laura yelped, spreading them out between them on the bathroom floor.

“Compliments of the Summer Society’s secret research collection,” Danny said with more than a hint of pride. “There’s an underground research catalog, separate from the main Silas U library. About fifty years ago, during the burning of Cicero Hall, the Summer Society made it their mission to preserve as much of the old collection as possible, in a place where the administration would never find it.”

“Danny, this, this is brilliant!” Laura exclaimed, her tears finally drying up. “And in English!”

“Yeah, mostly, thank God,” she said. “Right after Carmilla left, I went down to the collection and started digging. I started with the Blade of Hastur, then went through your last couple of videos and cross-referenced based on some of the key words you brought up—Lophiiformes, Hungry Light, Star Spawn, things like that.”

“You’re amazing,” Laura said, not seeing Danny blush as she could not tear her eyes away from the pages and pages of information in front of her. “So where do we start?”

“Well, here.” Danny grabbed one book specifically, the one that looked like human skin, and flipped it open to a marked page. She turned it towards Laura and pointed half-way down the page. “See this? Hastur, also known in Latin as Magnum Innominandum—the great not-to-be-named. Sounds pretty ominous, but he’s a benign god, one of the Great Old Ones. More interestingly, though, is that the Magnum Innominandum is the progenitor of this thing here.” Danny picked up another book and flipped to a marked page a third of the way in, showing an illustration of a cluster of what appeared to be bright lights.

“Yog-Sothoth,” Perry read aloud. “Also known as The Lurker at the Threshold, Umr at-Tawil, and The Eater of Souls… oh, well, that’s lovely.”

“Yeah, and check out this description,” Danny said, flipping a few pages and pointing to a large paragraph. Perry read aloud.

“ _It was an All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self,_ ” she began, “ _Not merely a thing of one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence's whole unbounded sweep—the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which outreaches fancy and mathematics alike. It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of earth have whispered of as YOG-SOTHOTH, and which has been a deity under other names; that which the crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the vaporous brains of the spiral nebulae know by an untranslatable Sign..._ ”

“Okay, but what does the Yog-Soth-Eater-of-Souls thing have to do with the Dean and the Light?” Laura asked.

“Laura, I think Yog-Sothoth _is_ the Light,” Danny said. She dug up yet another book and flipped it open to a marked page near the center. “Listen to this description: _The shocking form of fabulous Yog-Sothoth—only a congeries of iridescent globes, yet stupendous in its malign suggestiveness._ Sounds like Lophiiformes to me.”

“Oh, oh, and this,” Perry piped in, flipping through the human skin book with a look of resigned disgust on her face. “Here’s an account from a Gregorian Monk talking about an ancient pagan ritual to please what they called _an solas cumhachtach_ —it says that some ancient Pictish tribes from the northern Scottish coast would make sacrifices to a ‘hungry light.’ And… oh, and then this: _Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth._ Laura, I think Danny’s right, I think this may be Lophiiformes. I think they’re all names for the same thing.”

“Oh my God,” was all Laura could manage, placing her hands on top of her head and taking a few steadying breaths. “Oh my God, Danny, you, you did it. You did it! This is it, this is the Light, the consuming Light!”

“But what has the Dean got to do with all of it?” Perry asked.

“I think they have a symbiotic relationship,” Danny said, sifting through books and flipping through pages until she seemed satisfied with the arrangement in her lap. “I was thinking about it on my way over here, and one of the things I read referenced the Pnakotic Manuscripts, here.” She pointed to one page, then continued.

“The Manuscript talks about how Iok Sotot—the Eater of Souls, this Yog-Sothoth thing—needs the psychic vibration of its victims to sustain its connection to the Great Old Ones.”

“Psychic vibrations?” Laura asked. “You mean like, sanity? Like what Lophiiformes is taking from Betty and LaFontaine and everyone else?”

“Yeah, exactly,” Danny said. “Yog-Sothoth is called the Gate, I think it acts like a connection between the Great Old Ones and the world, this world, the one we’re in. When a mortal makes a sacrifice to Yog-Sothoth, it forms a connection, and it turns into a symbiotic relationship. Yog-Sothoth keeps its power connection to the Great Old Ones, the gate stays open, and in return the one who makes the sacrifice becomes immortal and gains some kind of power. The Manuscript doesn’t exactly say what that power is, just that it becomes part of the Gate.” 

“That’s the Dean, then,” Perry said. “It must be. Carmilla said she didn’t know what happened to the girls after she brought them to her Mother, so the Dean must be sacrificing them to Yog-Sothoth, in return for her power.”

“So what if we stop the sacrifice?” Laura asked. “Would that break the connection between the Dean and Yog-Sothoth?”

“I don’t know,” Danny said. “I can’t imagine it’s that easy, but maybe it is. If the Dean is really imbued with otherworldly power from the Light, though, I don’t think killing her is going to be an option, so sabotaging the sacrifice might be our only shot.”

“The Blade of Hastur,” Laura suddenly remembered. “It said it was forged from Star Spawn, we never figured out what the hell Star Spawn were.”

“Here, index,” Danny said, handing Laura one of the heavier books. Laura scanned the back at lightning speed, wishing she had this much focus when she was studying for things she was actually being graded for, then gasped and flipped about a hundred pages back. Danny and Perry were each absorbed in their own reading, and the sound of flipping pages echoed off the bathroom walls.

“Ah!” Laura yelled. “Star Spawn, offspring of Cthulhu, one of the Great Old Ones! Hastur and Cthulhu are both among the Great Old Ones, they’re on the other side of Yog-Sothoth, the Gate. Weapons imbued with a power source are traditionally as strong as the given source—think Sword of Gryffindor, after Harry killed the Basilisk with it, it was imbued with the power of Basilisk venom.”

“Did you just…?” Perry started, but Laura ignored her. 

“So if the Star Spawn are the offspring of Cthulhu, and Hastur is the progenitor of Yog-Sothoth, that must mean that the Blade of Hastur has the power to sever the connection between the Dean and Yog-Sothoth, because their power sources are of equal magnitude! Guys, do you know what this means?”

Danny and Perry gave Laura blank looks in response.

“It means, I think if Carmilla can get a hold of the Blade of Hastur, it might actually be strong enough to kill the Dean.”

“Laura, you’re forgetting something,” Danny said gently. “The Blade of Hastur consumes all who wield it. It may be powerful enough to kill the Dean and sever the connection with Yog-Sothoth, but it also kills whoever uses it.”

Laura instantly deflated, leaning back against the bathroom wall and running her hands through her hair with frustration.”

“Right,” she said, sighing. “Right, you’re right… okay, well, then we have to stop her.”

“What?” Danny and Perry said in unison. But Laura was already up on her feet.

“We have to stop her before she gets there. We didn’t know any of this before—now that we know, she doesn’t have to get the Blade of Hastur, we can figure something else out. Or something, I don’t know. But we can’t let her get to that thing. It’s going to kill her, and I can’t… we can’t let her do that. Are you guys coming or what?”

Laura looked down at the two women sitting on the floor, and after two heavy sighs, they both nodded. 

“Come on sweetheart, we’re going on a ride,” Perry said sweetly to LaFontaine as she untied their legs, leaving their arms bound, mostly to prevent them from being able to take off unexpectedly.

“Party time!” LaF shouted. Perry grabbed them firmly around the upper arm and steered them towards the door, following hot on Laura’s trail, Danny pulling up the rear. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Perry said, frazzled and terrified, but either unwilling or unable to show it. “Party time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quoted sources, in order of appearance:
> 
> "It was an All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self—not merely a thing of one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence's whole unbounded sweep—the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which outreaches fancy and mathematics alike. It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of earth have whispered of as YOG-SOTHOTH, and which has been a deity under other names; that which the crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the vaporous brains of the spiral nebulae know by an untranslatable Sign..." - "Through the Gates of the Silver Key", H.P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price
> 
> "Imagination called up the shocking form of fabulous Yog-Sothoth—only a congeries of iridescent globes, yet stupendous in its malign suggestiveness." - "The Horror in the Museum", H.P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald
> 
> "Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth." - "The Dunwich Horror", H.P. Lovecraft


	5. Et cum essentia, consumit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so glad the last chapter was well received! Since tomorrow is Tuesgay and we have been promised an even more painful episode than last week's, I wanted to post this tonight so that I'll be positioned to post the next one tomorrow when we are all gasping for air and dying a little (lot) inside.
> 
> Let me know what you think!

Once Carmilla found the last place she had a clear memory of, she let her knowledge of the wilderness guide her further. Her father had been dead for over 300 years, but his words still rang in her memory as clear as day— _Mircalla, if you’re ever lost, find low ground. All hills slope down into water eventually, and all water leads to civilization._

She smiled inwardly as she trekked through the damp, dark underbrush at the base of the mountains. Her father had been kind, doting, and uncannily wise. She didn’t think of him often enough. He had known, somehow, that his daughter wasn’t like other girls, and he taught her the same valuable lessons one would teach a boy in the 17th century. How to find water, start a fire, pitch a tent, shoot a musket, all things most girls her age would’ve cringed at the thought of. These were not the women of the British Colonies; these were ladies of esteemed families, waiting for men to come take care of such boorish tasks for them. Carmilla’s father knew she would have no man, and so he taught her to be useful herself.

And useful she was. Within half an hour she had found the stream that trickled downward, oozing into mud and marsh, and then, suddenly, the mouth of a cave around the corner, cut out of the mountains stony face like a jagged maw. It appeared as suddenly as if by magic (and it was entirely possible, she mused, that it had). 

Carmilla took a steadying breath: she knew what was coming. It would be water up to her ankles, then her knees, and then a sudden drop. Fifty, seventy-five feet maybe. Then another. Then another. Eventually she would be in a cavernous, underground lake—more of a water-filled stone pit, really—and set into the side of one of those walls, the Blade of Hastur. She had no idea what would happen when she found it, if she would be able to touch it at all, or if the mere act of pulling it from its resting place would consume whatever was left of her soul.

There was only one way to find out.

\---------------------------

Danny drove obscenely fast, but no matter how hard she pushed down on the accelerator, every few minutes or so Laura would ask the same question from the passenger’s seat:

“Can you go faster?”

“Laura, I’m going as fast as I can,” Danny repeated for the umpteenth time. “It’s dark, I don’t know these roads well, I don’t really feel safe driving any faster than…”

“You know, it is my car, why don’t you just pull over and—”

“You have not been sober long enough to be driving at night on these roads!” Perry cut her off from the back seat with a sharp, unwavering tone, and that was the end of that argument. LaFontaine lay across the back seat with their head in Perry’s lap, lolling it side to side periodically and giving a running commentary on the star party up in the sky. Perry would _hmmmm_ and _yes dear_ and smooth LaF’s hair repeatedly, having absolutely nothing more useful to do. Laura looked in the rear-view mirror at one point and saw quiet tears tracking down Perry’s cheeks. She was so beautiful, she even cried gracefully. 

Laura reached back and placed her hand on Perry’s knee, squeezing it gently.

“We’re going to fix this,” she assured. Perry gave the smallest of nods.

“Okay, the exit should be coming up here…” Danny said, squinting out into the darkness. There were no lights along this stretch of winding highway near the mountains, and it had been over a year since the last time she went this way. Trying not to get lost at 90 mph was becoming more and more of a feat.

“So how exactly do you know where we’re going?” Laura asked again.

“The Summer Society went spelunking out in the caves at the base of the mountains summer before last,” she explained. “I don’t know for sure that this is where Carmilla meant, but she said the caverns were north of campus, and this is the only network of caves I’m aware of in this direction… yes, okay, this is it,” she said, veering suddenly and sending everyone in the car sliding sharply to the right, then left.

“This has to be it,” Laura said under her breath as they wound around the base of the mountain, towards the northeastern side. “It has to be.”

\---------------------------

Though she didn’t need the air, having it was far more comfortable than not. The sensation of one’s lungs filling with water was, while not deadly to a creature with no need to breathe, extremely discomfiting from the perspective of having once been human and having the hard-wired natural instinct to not allow one’s lungs to fill with liquid. It took Carmilla a few minutes to adjust to the new sensation, though once she did, she found it almost pleasant. 

The bubbles from her mouth and nose disappeared as all oxygen evacuated her lungs, and she swam in silent, unending blackness. It was not unlike being dead, she thought, perhaps. Maybe as peaceful. They called her the living dead, sometimes, humans did. She wasn’t. Being a vampire wasn’t about being the living dead, because she wasn’t really, well, dead. Death indicated the absence of something that was still very much there. 

Death could not desire. Death could not fathom its own endlessness. Death could not love. Carmilla could do all of those things—of this, she was almost certain. There had to be life in there, somewhere. She knew she was alive. Laura brought that into sharp relief, the part of her that was still living.

She was, without a doubt, lacking something mortal though. But it wasn’t life. Not yet, anyway.

\---------------------------

“You two should wait here,” Laura said to Perry and LaFontaine when Danny had finally driven her car as close to the caves as it could go. For a bitty little German sedan, it took surprisingly well to off-roading, but they had definitely reached the end of the line.

“Good idea,” Perry agreed. “We’ll lock ourselves in. I have my phone, if you need anything.”

“We’ll be fine,” Danny reassured, though she had absolutely no idea if that was the case or not.

“You’ve got blankets in here if you need them,” Laura said. “They’re in the trunk. And a first-aid kit. And bear mace. And two emergency flares. And rations. And a gallon of distilled water…”

“Jesus Laura, you planning for the apocalypse?” Danny joked. Laura smiled sheepishly.

“Dad always says to be prepared,” she said. “Only child syndrome, remember? Come on, let’s go.”

“Shouldn’t we take something with us, just in case?” Danny asked. Laura frowned.

“I don’t think we’re going to run into any bears this time of year,” she said. Danny shook her head.

“That’s not what I mean,” she said. “I mean… well, if we find Carmilla…”

“She wouldn’t hurt me,” Laura said. Danny gave her an incredulous look, and she recovered quickly. “Us, I mean. She wouldn’t hurt either of us.”

“Laura, if we find her, and she already got to the Blade of Hastur… we don’t know what it’s going to do to her. The literature says ‘consume’, but it doesn’t say what that means. We’ve been assuming it means that it kills her, but what if that’s not it? What if ‘consume’ means… well, what if it consumes _Carmilla_? The pers—vamp—whatever, the Carmilla you know? What if she’s not her when we find her?”

Laura took a steadying breath, and shook her head.

“No,” she said plainly, turning and heading in the direction of low ground. _If you’re ever out of fresh water, Laura, look for low ground. Low ground leads to water, and water leads to people. Just make sure you use your purifying tablets._ Her dad had drilled it into her from a young age, the self-reliance, the survival instinct. Some instincts, some knowledge, runs under the current of who you are. Once it’s under your skin, it never leaves you.

Laura knew that was what Carmilla was to her, who she was to her. She was a current under her skin. She wouldn’t lose her. Her essence, her being, who she is. The whatever she is. She wouldn’t.

\---------------------------

She felt like she had been swimming for hours when she saw something that made her look twice, then three times, just to be sure it was really there. A bright light. She wondered, briefly, if it was Lophiiformes, but it was not nearly strong enough, or alluring in any way. It was simple, solid, unmoving, and protruding from the smooth, cold stone wall. It glowed of its own accord, needing nothing to illuminate it. She didn’t have to guess; how many glowing magical weapons could there be in one cavern, right?

The blade was embedded into the rock, but the hilt stuck out, very _Sword in the Stone_. She noticed as she approached it closely that one, it was very warm, emanating heat into the frigid water, and two, there was an inscription on the hilt. She squinted into the light and read it closely:

_Ex ossibus fortis_  
 _Aeterna virtus_  
 _Praedo mundi_  
 _Et minor mundus_  
 _Essentia consumit  
_ _Et cum essentia, consumit_

“From strong bones, strength eternal? Destroyer of… small worlds? Shit, I should have paid more attention to those Latin classes,” Carmilla cursed herself. Regardless of whatever it said, though, she knew it wouldn’t change anything—even if the damn thing said “I’M GOING TO KILL YOU”, she wouldn’t have swam all this way for nothing.

She thought to take a deep breath, but remembered where she was, and smirked to herself.

Now or never.

She grasped the hilt firmly with both hands, and pulled.


	6. Every Thorn in the Crown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, so, I was not even REMOTELY prepared for episode 34. Not even a little. I'm still reeling. That said, here is the next chapter of this fic. There will be one more, and I promise it will be so much kinder than the last episode of Carmilla was. In the words of Olaf, "ALL GOOD THINGS! ALL GOOD THINGS!" 
> 
> I tried to make this chapter line up with the information we received in the latest episode as much as possible, but obviously there will be differences since I went in a different direction with it. Let me know what you think!

It happened so fast, Carmilla barely knew what to make of it. One moment, she was pulling the Blade of Hastur out from the face of the cavern’s edge, a thousand feet underground. The next, she was standing in the center of a drafty, unlit building. She was still in her soaking wet clothes, dripping water and shivering in the cold.

“What the frilly pink hell just happened,” she muttered to herself, looking down at the weapon in her hands. It was large, but unexpectedly light, very wieldy, and there was something else about it. It felt like it was being pulled—not out of her hands, but like the Blade of Hastur was magnetized towards something. She could feel it wanting to move in a certain direction—towards the front of the building, which she was now realizing was a chapel. She was standing in the aisle between two rows of dusty pews, a thick layer of grey visible in the weak moonlight shining through a broken stained-glass window. 

She hadn’t been in a church in over 300 years. She used to attend Mass weekly with her father, but hadn’t been back since she was turned. As a general rule, vampires couldn’t enter churches—they weren’t protected by the same ancient magic as houses, but they were hallowed ground, and thus impenetrable without an invitation. 

She wandered down the aisle towards the pulpit, sword firmly in her grasp, boots squishing with each step she took. There is no hope of stealth when every inch of you is soaking wet, so she didn’t even bother trying to conceal her footsteps. The echo in the tall wooden structure made it sound like there were two sets of footsteps, her and her shadow. 

There was a large crucifix hung on the front wall behind the pulpit. Carmilla stood beneath it, looking up at the Christ’s gaunt, anguished hardwood features. They had spared no detail; every thorn in the crown, every strand of hair, the heaviness under his eyes, it was all accounted for. He looked up at an unseen figure above him, jaw slack, waiting to be redeemed, to be called. To go home.

“Depressing, isn’t it?” 

Carmilla went completely stiff, clenching her jaw and tightening her grip on the hilt of the sword. She knew that thick, syrupy, arsenic-laced voice anywhere.

“Maman.”

“He just looks so sad about the whole thing,” the Dean observed casually, approaching Carmilla without hesitation. She walked up the steps of the pulpit, and stood an arm’s width from Carmilla, crossing her arms over her chest as she observed the face of Jesus herself. “It’s pathetic, really. There he was, being offered immortality—eternity!—and what does he do? Cry about it. _My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?_ Please. The best thing his God ever did was leave him hanging on that hill.”

She went silent, and Carmilla did not know how to respond. She had no idea what to do. Maman clearly saw the weapon glowing in her hands, but she was unafraid, bold even. It caught Carmilla off-guard; she began to wonder if this Blade of Hastur could do anything at all to hurt Maman, or if it really had been a hopeless death-wish from the start.

“I gave you everything too, _ma chère_ ,” Maman finally continued. “I gave you immortality. I gave you eternity. And what have you done?” She raised her eyebrows and finally acknowledged the sword in Carmilla’s hands. “You’ve come to kill me. To forsake me, me, your own mother. And in God’s house! What would the Count think of his daughter now?” Maman’s smirk was dangerous and deeply unsettling. “How does the line go? _Forgive them, for they know not what they do?_ That always seemed a bit rich to me, coming from a God who slaughtered every firstborn in Egypt on a bad day. That is, if you believe the stories.”

“How did you get in here?” Carmilla asked, not knowing how to respond and wanting desperately to understand more about the situation, in the faintest hope of perhaps surviving it.

“Do you really not know where you are, Mircalla?” the Dean asked, her voice lilting with mirth. “You’re in the Deadly Chapel.”

“Next to the Lustig Building?”

“The only one,” Maman said, walking casually across the pulpit to one of the stained glass windows. She peered through the ruby glass at something Carmilla could not see. “It was defiled fifty years ago by a handful of drunk co-eds with a Ouija board. Opened the door, so to speak. Rather convenient for me. It gave us the perfect place to set up shop.” Maman walked slowly back towards Carmilla, tracing her finger lazily down the banister that edged the pulpit. Carmilla could see the track the woman’s gloved hand left in the years of accumulated dust.

“Yes, this is where it happens,” the Dean explained, answering Carmilla’s unasked question. “That’s how you got here, as I’m sure you were wondering. The Blade of Hastur—I know what it is—is drawn to the Gate, to me. Believe it or not, that tin sword of yours wants me dead just as much as you do. Practically has a mind of its own. But sadly, the only blood on that blade tonight will be yours, Mircalla.

“I’ve had enough of your belligerence and your betrayal. I give you everything, and you do nothing but take. And now, I’ll take what’s mine—” she looked down at the sword still clutched in Carmilla’s grasp, “—and put an end to all of this, like I should have done a long, long time ago.”

The struggle was fast and painful. The Dean lunged forward, wrenching the Blade of Hastur out of Carmilla’s hands. Carmilla threw herself at the woman, shoulder towards her gut, and sent her barreling down the steps of the pulpit, backwheeling over a pew, and towards the far wall. As the Dean quickly righted herself, Carmilla attempted to snatch the sword, but the blade caught the edge of her palm. 

Carmilla looked down at the wound, and was horrified to see her blood being soaked up into the edge of the blade, as if it were feeding off her. The Dean took a deep breath and began to laugh—a deep, throaty, merciless sound.

“You read the part about consumption, right?” she asked cheekily. “Or no? I don’t remember Latin being one of your brilliant strengths, Mircalla. Please, allow me to _drive the point home_ , if you will.” 

The Dean jabbed towards Carmilla’s stomach, causing her to fall backwards, breaking her landing with one of her wrists. A sharp, stabbing pain shot through the joint, and she felt very much like it might have broken. It occurred to her that this would be the first bone she had broken in nearly 350 years of life on planet Earth, and how strange that it came from a simple backwards fall. 

She also noticed, in that moment, that she had landed in a pile of dirt and shattered rainbow glass from the broken window pane above. The Dean stood over her, holding the hilt of the sword in both hands and bringing it up over her head in one swift motion, preparing to plunge it down into Carmilla’s core. In that instant, Carmilla grabbed a handful of debris and threw it up at the Dean’s face. She yowled like an angry cat, dropping the sword reflexively to paw at her eyes. 

Carmilla was, for the first time in her very long life, thrilled that Laura had made her watch that stupid adaptation of Hamlet with the lions.

With the thought of Laura's face clear in her mind, Carmilla picked up the Blade of Hastur and threw all of her weight behind it as she jammed it into the Dean’s chest.

They both screamed. Carmilla felt her essence being pulled through her hands, into the hilt, into the Blade itself. It was like being sucked into a drain, and she could feel herself leaving her body. She could feel herself coming apart, cell walls fraying. 

Being consumed.

_Ex ossibus fortis_   
_Aeterna virtus_   
_Praedo mundi_   
_et minor mundus_   
_Essentia consumit_   
_Et cum essentia, consumit_

When Carmilla came around, someone was stroking her hair. She felt like she was lying in grass, something gently itching what of her legs was not covered by the overbearing layers of dress.

Dress. She was in a dress. And she knew that dress. There was the ever-present feeling of a heavy brass key sewn into the innermost hem.

Her eyes popped open, and when they did, a pair of pale grey ones were staring back at her. The face was round and pleasant, framed by a copious amount of wavy, dark blonde hair, with a dainty mole on the cheek. When Carmilla made eye contact with her, the face split into a wide, cheerful smile.

“It took you long enough,” she said. Carmilla smiled.

“Long enough for what?” she asked.

“Everything!” Ell said, laughing, cupping Carmilla’s face in her smooth, dainty hands. She had such small hands. “To come around. To kill her. To die. To set me free. All of it, really.” 

Carmilla sat up, taking in her strange surroundings. She was, in fact, lying in the grass, but there was absolutely nothing else around them. An endless stretch of strange, not-quite-real fields, flat as a prairie, and a sky that was almost too blue. The green and yellow of the grass seemed desaturated in comparison, and Carmilla’s mouth felt dry. The air was too thin, it didn’t feel like air. Something wasn’t quite right about this place.

“Ell, I’m so sor—” Carmilla began, but Ell reached out and placed her hand over Carmilla’s mouth. She removed it, then leaned in and gave her a peck on the lips.

“Please, don’t be. I said terrible things to you, and I never forgave myself for it. I spent a very, very long time stuck in the Gate thinking about it. I did love you, you know. Very much. I just got scared. It happens.” Ell said the last words with a hint of wisdom, eying Carmilla with a haughty smirk.

“Yeah,” Carmilla agreed, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. “It does. I should never have let Maman take you, I just, I tried, but…”

“Oh, love,” was all Ell said, reaching between them and grabbing onto Carmilla’s hands. “You tried. But I’m okay now, see? All new,” she said, looking down at her young, voluminous body curving beneath the white linen dress. “And I have you to thank for that.”

“So you’re… free now?” Carmilla asked. Ell shrugged.

“More or less,” she said. “But not until you decide.”

“Decide what?” Carmilla asked. Ell smiled.

“Decide where you’re going,” she said simply. Carmilla had a sudden, sick realization, one that she could not believe took her so long to become aware of.

“Shit, I’m dead, aren’t I?” she asked. Ell giggled without restraint.

“You are slow,” she observed. “Yes, you are, quite dead.”

“So this is Heaven?” Carmilla asked. Ell shook her head.

“No,” she said. “This is your subconscious, actually. I recognize it.”

“You’ve been here before?” Carmilla asked incredulously. Ell nodded.

“Of course,” she said. “When you slept, sometimes. Remember when you would see me in your dreams? I was here. I never knew if you saw it or not, but this is what I always saw, where I was when I was there. It was like seeing you from across the field through fog though, not like this. Laura’s is much more interesting, by the way. Very bright, close to the water. A bit like an ocean. Yours has gotten better, though. There was a time when there wasn’t anything here at all. Something’s grown, now,” she said, picking at the grass around them. “So now I suppose this is where you make your decision.”

“I, uh, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be deciding, exactly,” Carmilla said. 

“You died by preternatural forces,” Ell explained. “As did I. Your death was unnatural, like your prolonged life. You violated the laws of nature, and now that the circumstances of your unnatural life have been extinguished, the law can be put back into place, if you wish. The Gate swings both ways, _oui?_ You can, if you like, go back and live out your mortal life. Or, if you’ve had enough of that planet, you can move on. The choice is yours, a choice most do not have. Take a moment, if you need it.”

Carmilla looked down at Ell’s small hands holding hers, and remembered holding another hand at a different time, in a different place. When she looked up, Ell had a sad, knowing smile on her face.

“I thought so,” she said.

“I’m so sorry,” Carmilla said, struggling to keep her voice steady. Tears trailed down Ell’s cheeks, but she was still cheerful.

“Don’t be,” she said. “We got to part ways a second time, on much better terms. You saved me, Mircalla, and you saved Laura, and she loves you. She loves you so much. You are the ocean in her, even if you don’t see it yet. You are.” 

Ell squeezed her hands, and Carmilla bridged the gap between them and pulled her into a tight hug. They embraced for a long while, though something about the passage of time was difficult to pin, so it was difficult to know how long “a long while” was precisely. Eventually, they let go.

“I will always love you,” Carmilla said. Ell nodded.

“You, too,” she said. “And I hope that when you do finally cross over, you’ll find me. I won’t be waiting, but I will be there.” They both smiled, and Ell kissed Carmilla’s cheek.

“Close your eyes,” she instructed, and Carmilla did. The last thing she remembered feeling there was Ell’s warm hand on her upper arm, giving it a tight squeeze.


	7. The Ocean in Her

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who has given kudos, commented, and bookmarked this story. You guys are awesome and made me feel so good about my first foray into chaptered Carmilla fic. :) This is the last chapter of this story, and I promise it is so much nicer than episode 34. Although I am still holding onto my hope that episodes 35 and/or 36 will be redemptive.
> 
> Let me know what you think of the last chapter. Enjoy, and happy Thanksgiving!

“Laura, you can’t go much farther,” Danny called from twenty feet back, standing knee-deep in frigid cave water, shivering visibly. “It’ll drop soon.”

“I’ll be fine,” Laura said, not sure if it was even loud enough for Danny to hear, or caring. She was up to her waist in water, and couldn’t feel her feet at all anymore. There was no light, save for their two flashlights, and she could not see down into the water at all. She could only scoot her feet forward, one inch at a time, until she hit the edge. What she would do after that, she didn’t know.

“Laura,” Danny called her name again, this time with a rising anxiety in her voice. “It’s a fifty foot drop, at least. Can you swim?”

“Sort of?” Laura said. “I can tread water, Danny, I’m not going to drown.” Her father would never have let her out of the house if he thought she couldn’t at least keep her head above water, in a worst-case scenario. This definitely qualified, and now she wished she had thanked him for those swimming lessons so many years ago. Hopefully she would get the chance to later.

She didn’t know what she was doing here. She knew Carmilla had been here—there was a large men’s jacket discarded at the edge of the water with a few of her long, wavy black hairs hanging onto it, as well as small boot prints in the silt going towards the water, but not leaving it. She had to have been here, to be here still, somewhere. Had she really swam a thousand feet down into the cavern to retrieve the Blade of Hastur? Could her vampire body actually survive that? Did the Blade kill her as soon as she took it? 

Laura let out a strangled sigh that sounded more like a sob. She had only questions—maddening, terrifying questions—and no answers. Every question she asked Danny was returned with a sympathetic shrug. 

“Laura, it’s been over an hour,” Danny said gently, her voice small and suddenly right behind Laura. “Maybe…”

“I’m not leaving without her,” Laura said resolutely, and though Danny could not see her face, she knew she was struggling to speak through tears. 

“Okay.” 

\------------------------------------------------------

Perry tried to sleep in the car, but couldn’t. She was afraid LaF would find a way to let themselves out and wander straight into the belly of the beast if she wasn’t hyper-vigilant. For what it was worth, LaF had barely tried to turn over in the last hour, much less attempt an escape. They were still lying with their head in Perry’s lap, looking up through the window at the stars over the trees.

“So pretty,” LaF said, rolling their head back and forth slightly. “So many… and they’re dancing…”

“Mmhmmm,” Perry said absently. 

“Uh oh,” LaF suddenly said, and Perry’s eyes jerked open.

“Uh oh what, honey?” she asked, but LaFontaine’s face had gone blank, eyes pale and unfocused, jaw slack.

“Oh no,” Perry said, shaking LaF’s shoulders. “No no no, no, please, no…”

LaFontaine’s eyes suddenly came into sharp focus again. They began thrashing and looking around wildly, like an animal caught in a trap. Perry placed her hands firmly on both of LaF’s shoulders and gave them a firm shake.

“Hey, hey, you’re okay,” she said. “You’re safe. It’s just me, Su—LaFontaine. It’s just me. You’re safe.”

LaF stopped thrashing and met Perry’s gaze.

“I… where am I?” LaFontaine asked, sitting up and trying to rub their face but finding their hands bound together. They turned to Perry, who was positively sobbing.

“Whoa, hey,” LaFontaine said, bringing their arms up and over top of Perry’s head to pull her into a hug. “Calm down, I’m okay. I don’t know where the hell I just was, but I’m okay now. I’m okay. I’m home.”

\------------------------------------------------------

Another hour passed. Danny could not feel any of her extremities anymore, and her jaw hurt from chattering. She was beginning to have serious concerns about hypothermia, especially for Laura, who was so much smaller than she was.

“Laura,” she said again. She felt like all she did anymore was say her name, and an entire discussion within it, simply through tone. 

“No.”

“Laura, we’re going to freeze to death out here,” Danny insisted. “It’s been over two hours, and Carmilla’s been gone almost five. I think… I think she’s gone, Laura.”

“If you want to leave, then go,” Laura said, voice wavering probably from sheer exposure to the cold as much as emotion. “I won’t hold it against you. But I am not leaving without her, Danny. I can’t.”

Danny considered whether or not she should simply pick Laura up, throw her over her shoulder, and carry her kicking and screaming out of the cavern. She would never forgive her, but it might be the only way to get her out before she sustained serious harm from standing in frigid cave water for hours on end. 

And truth be told, she would probably never forgive Danny anyway, for any of it. Or herself. Especially herself.

It was around this time—when Danny began rubbing her hands together for warmth, trying to get some blood back into her fingers before she had to manhandle Laura for her own wellbeing—that they both noticed something happening to their far left, maybe thirty yards away. 

There were bubbles.

“Uhm,” Danny said, gesturing in that general direction. Laura’s jaw went slack, eyes wide, not knowing what exactly they were looking at. Maybe it was Carmilla—but she didn’t breathe, how could there be bubbles? Especially after having swam a thousand feet down and back? Maybe it was something else entirely. Laura hadn’t taken the time to consider the notion that something might be living in the depths of that cavern besides the Blade of Hastur. 

Something small and frail and light suddenly bobbed up to the black, glassy surface of the water.

“Oh my God, it’s Carmilla,” Laura realized, voice trapped in her chest, barely able to bring forth the words. “Carmilla! Carmilla! Jesus, Carm!” Laura began splashing wildly in her direction, paying no mind to the ledge, wherever it might be. She could hear Danny following behind her, saying something that Laura could or would not understand. Carmilla did not move.

“Carmilla, oh God, please, no, no, please.” Laura reached where her body floated, motionless. She grabbed her and turned her over, face up. She was sheet white and her eyes were closed, all of her features somehow more delicate than before. 

“Laura, _Laura_ , let’s get her to land, come on,” Danny said, grabbing Carmilla under the arms and dragging her body through the water towards dry ground. Laura grabbed her legs and they carried her, body skimming the top of the water, logged with water but still unexpectedly light. It disturbed Danny, how frail she felt, like a limp rag doll in her arms. This was not the Carmilla who had nearly killed her, and as insane as it sounded, she kind of wanted that Carmilla back.

“Oh God, oh God,” Laura repeated as they finally pulled her body out of the water and onto solid ground. They laid her on her back in the silt, and immediately Laura began performing CPR compressions. Danny stood beside her, arms hanging limp, tears rolling freely down her face.

“Laura…”

“No,” Laura yelled. “No, no, no. You do _not_ get to die on me you stupid vampire!” Ten compressions, two breaths. Ten more compressions, two more breaths. Laura wasn’t even sure if she was doing it right, but she wasn’t thinking anymore, not really. She was running on first aid autopilot, the way they always warned you would in the classes. Fight or flight kicks in, and your brain reroutes all of your conscious thought straight through the emotional core. It has to be instinctive, reflexive, as innate as breathing.

As innate as breathing. 

Carmilla’s body gave an involuntary jerk, and she began to cough up water. Laura and Danny scrambled to turn her on her side as she heaved and retched, gasping for air. After a minute, her breathing steadied and the coughing ceased. Carmilla tried to sit up, but struggled to. Laura pulled her upper half up into her lap, smoothing her hair away from her face. 

“I’m so sorry, Carmilla,” she whispered over and over again. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean any of it. I didn’t. I’m so sorry.”

“Hey, it’s okay,” she said weakly, giving a little chuckle as she looked up at Laura’s tear-streaked face. She grabbed onto Laura’s hand and held it tightly. “I’m here, it’s okay. Stop crying on my face.”

Despite the situation, Laura managed to crack a smile.

“What happened?” Danny asked.

“Danny, Jesus, give her a minute!”

“I’m fine,” Carmilla said. “Long story short, ‘cause I’m a little low on air? Found the Blade of Hastur, got portkey’d to a demon-infested church, killed my Mother, died, and Ell zapped me back here, I guess.”

“Wait, Ell did? You saw her?” Laura asked. Carmilla sighed.

“Yeah, I did,” she said. “Laura, she’s free. They all are, now. LaFontaine is going to be fine, and Betty, and everyone. You did it.”

“I did it?” Laura asked incredulously. “No, _you_ did it. You killed her. You saved everyone. You are the least-useless vampire ever.” Carmilla gave her a wry smile.

“Gee, thanks cupcake,” she said. “It feels nice to have the approval of Lauronica Mars.”

They both laughed, and in the midst of it all, Laura became abruptly aware of something new.

“Carmilla, look,” she said, staring at something in the air between them. “Your breath.”

Carmilla stared, wide-eyed, at the white puffs of air appearing in front of her face, just like Laura’s and Danny’s. She quickly placed her hand on her chest, and Laura saw something new appear in her face, something she had never seen before. Carmilla suddenly grabbed Laura’s hand and placed it on her soaking wet shirt.

“Laura… it’s beating.”

She was right. Laura couldn’t help but grin like a teary, snotty idiot. Carmilla began to cry, tears running down the sides of her face and into her hair.

“I haven’t felt that in… a really, really long time,” she said. “Ell wasn’t kidding, then. I’m not a vampire anymore.”

“Wh… wait, really?” Danny asked. Carmilla nodded.

“Yeah, really, Xena,” she said. “Looks like we’re down one paranormal freak in the Scooby gang.” Danny gave her a scandalized look, but still couldn’t help but smile. This Carmilla, she didn’t mind so much. This Carmilla she might even learn to like.

“Danny, can you go see if LaFontaine is back to normal again? And get a blanket out of the back of the car, and a change of clothes? I don’t think Carmilla can walk anywhere yet.”

“Yeah, definitely,” Danny said with a nod. “I’ll be back ASAP.” Danny took off, leaving the two of them alone in the cave.

They sat in silence for a while after Danny left, Laura cradling Carmilla’s head in her lap, one hand smoothing her hair, the other still on top of Carmilla’s chest, feeling her heart beat. She felt like she could sit this way forever.

“I love you,” Laura said. “I’m sorry I never said it before. I should have. I was so afraid I’d never get the chance.” Carmilla took a sharp breath, remembering Ell’s words. _You are the ocean in her, even if you don’t see it yet._

“I love you, too. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about—”

Laura cut her off by leaning down and kissing her.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said when they pulled apart. “None of it matters. You’re here. You’re alive. You’re… human. Holy crap, you’re human.”

“That I am,” Carmilla agreed. “God, it’s strange, to feel that again. Three hundred years of silence, and now I can hear my heart pounding in my ears. It’s deafening. How can you hear anything?”

“You’ll get used to it again,” Laura said with a laugh. She leaned in and kissed Carmilla again.

“What was that one for?” she asked. Laura shrugged.

“Do I need a reason?” she asked. Carmilla gave her trademark smirk—that was, apparently, nothing to do with being a vampire, and simply part of who Carmilla was. Laura could not wait to find out all of the parts of Carmilla that were left behind, and all the new parts of her that were coming back to life.

“I suppose not,” Carmilla said. “I’ll be happier when I have the strength to sit up and kiss you properly, though.”

“Ditto.”

Laura felt like the world was spinning with possibility. Carmilla was human. The Dean was gone. The Gate was broken, and nobody else would have to die to feed it. Betty was going to be okay. All of the girls, LaFontaine, everyone was going to be okay. Danny didn’t hate her anymore. Carmilla loved her back. Carmilla was human.

“What’s going on in there?” Carmilla asked.

“A lot,” Laura admitted. “I just… I was so afraid you wouldn’t come back.”

“Me too,” Carmilla admitted. “But I did.”

“But you did,” Laura echoed. 

They sat in silence, hands stacked over Carmilla’s beating heart, watching their exhaled breaths mingle in front of them. Alive. So very, very alive, and with the whole world no longer between them, but before them.


	8. Epilogue: Heart Beating

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone asked for a fluffy epilogue, and who am I to deny a request? :)

When Carmilla awoke, she was lying on her back with a gentle weight pressing down on her chest. She could tell without opening her eyes that it was Laura’s hand. She often woke up that way now—with Laura’s hand on her chest, or her head resting against it, having fallen asleep to her heart beat. She could understand the intrigue; she herself often sat and did nothing but feel the steady thump within her chest. After a month she was growing accustomed to the sensation again, and now only really noticed it when she was intentional about it.

She picked up Laura’s hand, kissed her fingers, and set it down gently between them. Something else she was getting used to again: thirst. She had hunger pains as a vampire when she needed to feed, but was never thirsty. She only drank non-blood liquids for taste, not necessity. Now she would wake up in the middle of the night with a dry, cottony mouth, and understood more fully than ever the pleasures of indoor plumbing. No more walking out to the pump to get a drink; she could pipe a glass of cool water right into her own home. Incredible.

She was standing in the dark of the bathroom, gulping water and listening to her heart beat, when she heard the springs of the bed creak as Laura shot up, voice frantic.

“Carmilla? Carmilla?”

“Hey,” she said, poking her head through the door frame into the main room. Laura was standing in the middle of the floor, hands on top of her head, distraught features partially illuminated in profile by the moonlight soaking through the window curtains. “I’m right here, cupcake. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Oh,” Laura said with relief. She sat down on the edge of the bed, and Carmilla thought she might be about to cry. That had been happening on and off since she returned—she would wake up to Laura lying awake and weeping quietly, trying not to wake her, or even sometimes whimpering in her sleep. Sometimes it was flashbacks from the night they found Carmilla in the cave; other times it was that Carmilla was not in the room when she awoke, and Laura immediately went into panic mode.

“Another flashback?” Carmilla asked, taking a seat on the edge of the bed next to Laura. She wrapped her arms around her as she leaned into her embrace, and planted a kiss on the little blonde’s head.

“No, I just, I woke up and you weren’t there. I’m sorry, it’s stupid, I just freaked,” Laura said. Carmilla ran her fingers through her hair.

“It’s not stupid,” she assured. “I had PTSD for years after I got out of that coffin Mother locked me in. I used to sleep outside all the time, because being in a room with four walls was too much like being locked underground. Sometimes if I get tangled up in the sheets, I wake up freaking out, thinking I’m back there again.”

“You never told me that,” Laura said, intrigued by the revelation.

“Well, I’m telling you now,” Carmilla said. “Lay down?” Laura acquiesced and they curled up on her bed, flush together, Carmilla’s arms still wrapped around Laura as she rested her head on Carmilla’s shoulder, arm draped over her waist, feeling her chest rise and fall with each breath. She never imagined she could be so attuned to another person’s breathing and heartbeat, but with Carmilla, it all just seemed so novel, she couldn’t help herself.

“It’s just hard to believe it’s really over,” Laura whispered after a few minutes of silence, unsure if Carmilla was even still awake.

“Hmmm?” she asked, indicating that she was.

“All of it,” she said. “Your Mother… the Dean… she’s gone. Like, she’s really gone. I keep thinking she’s going to come back somehow, but you really did it.”

“I know how you feel,” Carmilla said. “Every time I fear footsteps in the hall, I wonder if it’s Maman somehow back from the grave, or Will coming to exact revenge.”

“What ever happened to him?” Laura asked. Carmilla gave a little shrug that she could feel.

“Dunno,” she said. “He bailed after I killed her, I guess he figured he was next. Which, to be fair, he was.” Laura did not need to see Carmilla’s face to know her trademark smirk was there. “I don’t think he’ll be back, though. He’s not an idiot, he knows without Mother’s protection he doesn’t stand a chance against me.”

“But you’re not a vampire anymore,” Laura pointed out. “The super strength, the spontaneous combustion, it’s all gone.”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t know that,” Carmilla said. Laura smiled and breathed in the scent of sleep and lavender.

“You know what I sort of miss?” Laura said.

“What’s that?”

“The black cat,” she said. “I don’t have the blinding light nightmares anymore, but I liked having it around. It was comforting, in a creepy sort of way.” Carmilla pulled back a little bit and gave Laura a look that, even in the dark, she could tell was haughty disbelief, like she knew something and couldn’t believe Laura didn’t.

“What?” Laura asked. Carmilla grinned.

“Nothing,” she said. “I miss the cat too.” She pulled Laura close to her again, and let out a deep purring sound. It was actually uncanny, how feline it was. It made Laura giggle, and the fear of waking up without her melted away. It would probably be there for a while, that tight fist in her chest, that worry that things couldn’t possibly be working out this well. Not after an entire semester of hell.

But they were. She passed her fall semester, magically, and while there was still plenty of strangeness to go around at Silas University, murderous Deans and ancient vampire cabals weren’t on the schedule anymore. She was quite content to deal with your run-of-the-mill giant fungi, apparitions, self-locking doors, and disappearing buildings. Speaking of which, she would have to check to see if Danny was still holding her Lit 2 review in the Hobbes Building, or if Kierkegaard Hall had reappeared by the lake.

“I love you, but go to sleep,” Carmilla muttered into the top of Laura’s head. “I can hear you thinking.”

“No you can’t,” she said, but she did decide to let go of her spinning gears and let sleep consume her once more. It was so easy to do, now. All she had to do was cuddle in and start listening to Carmilla’s heart beating. It was the lullaby she never knew she needed, and hoped to never be without again.

“I love you, too.”


End file.
